


Hold Me

by TimmyJaybird



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Breaking Hannibal, Dark Will, Songfic, is that a thing?, pre-establish relationship, romantic murder fantasies?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-02-19
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:15:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1207387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TimmyJaybird/pseuds/TimmyJaybird
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Will suddenly denies Hannibal, after so many nights of beauty, he sees that perhaps he has let Will in far too deeply, and that even gods can break.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold Me

**Author's Note:**

> So this is based off of Savage Garden's "Hold Me" (you can find the lyrics in the fic). Did not go in the direction I originally planned, ended up being way darker. Oh well! I can't really explain why this song makes me think of Hannigram anyway. I really just wanted to experiment with dark Will and the idea of Hannibal slowly breaking. I also really felt like writing something short...er.

_Hey, if we can't find a way out of these problems then maybe we don't need this. Standing face to face- enemies at war we build defenses, and secret hiding places._

Hannibal felt Will’s eyes on him, in the dark of the early night, the moon casting down eerie blues over their bodies. He had lost his jacket, his vest, was left in just his button down with the sleeves rolled up, but in the summer heat it was better that way.

He knelt on the ground, hands slick and dark, waiting. Waiting for Will to come over, to wrap his hands around the hilt of the knife Hannibal held, to guide Hannibal to where _he_ wanted to cut. Hannibal may have been the master, but he bent to Will’s desires far more than he ever intended when he first tried to cultivate that blackness inside him.

“Will,” he called, finally turned, and the man was still just _watching_ him.

“I don’t want to,” he said, swallowing the thick lump in his throat. He eyed the man that was sprawled out in the grass, the man no one would miss, that Hannibal had expertly killed, already opened up by the blood on his hands. “I just don’t want to.” He repeated it, but the words still sank in the air, left lifeless on the ground.

Will turned and left Hannibal alone, perplexed. The man had been to Will’s taste- Will _had_ a taste, and Hannibal had learned it. Right height, look, the perfect body to cut open and explore. The beginnings of something beautiful- Will had whispered that once, and Hannibal’s chest had swelled because _it was so perfect_ and his darling was _learning_.

Hannibal stood, making his way towards the house, leaving his prize and tools behind. Will had no neighbors, he had no fear of discovery. He let himself inside, found Will standing in the kitchen swallowing a mouthful of whiskey. He winced as it burned down his throat, didn’t look at or even _acknowledge_ Hannibal, and poured himself another shot.

“Was he not to your liking?” Will said nothing, swallowed the whiskey with a grimace, and then looked at Hannibal with hard, grey eyes. “I don’t want to do this,” was all he said, before pushing past him and leaving him alone in an oddly dead kitchen.  
 _I might need you to hold me tonight, I might need you to say it's alright. I might need you to make the first stand- because tonight I'm finding it hard to be your man._

Hannibal was left to clean up the mess. It had been some time since he had done it alone- he had grown used to Will’s helping- thought often wondering- hands, the little sounds he made when he moved. The way he’d slip his sticky, red arms around Hannibal and hold him when they were done.

Hannibal had a shower, and found Will laying in his bed, feigning sleep. He had long since memorized the shallow breaths the man took while he slept, and good as Will thought he was, he could not mimic them perfectly. He stood there, in the doorway, watching, wondering if it was more worth his time to get in his car and drive over an hour to his own bed.

The thought made his chest ache so badly he felt ill. He walked towards the bed instead, sat on the edge of it, and reached for Will. The man rolled away from his touch before Hannibal could even graze his skin, and the ache spread from his chest to his belly. He needed the other man to turn, to look at him, to let him touch him. He needed Will to need him- sometime in between embedding himself so far into the younger man that he couldn’t have a thought without Hannibal thinking it first and watching Will’s own hunger for the feeling of purity Hannibal’s ways brought, he’d begun to need him just as badly. If not worse.

“Look at me,” Hannibal whispered, but Will did not.

_Hey, more than angry words I hate this silence. It's getting so loud. Well I want to scream, but bitterness has silenced these emotions. It's getting hard to breathe. So tell me isn't happiness worth more than a golden diamond ring? I'm willing to do anything to calm the storm in my heart. I've never been the praying kind but lately I've been down upon my knees. Not looking for a miracle, just a reason to believe._

Hannibal tried to tell himself he had meant to leave, to get in his car and make the drive home. He would sort Will out in the morning.

He made it as far as the couch downstairs, where he sat, feeling out of place in his pajamas- clothing he wasn’t sure why he bothered with, as Will would paw it off so he could curl up against bare skin while they slept.

Hannibal’s fingers were twitching, idly fiddling with a button. He was tired, he felt it down to his bones, but he hadn’t felt tired after shedding blood in so long. Yet he felt beyond his years, bitter beneath all the tugging aches in his body.

Will had no reason to become so cold, suddenly. He had no reason to turn down Hannibal’s _gift_ \- he could have been the first to plung the knife expertly into him, as Hannibal had taught. Could have done it under a moon he knew, at a house he called home, with a man he called _lover_ so easily it was as if the word just tumbled endlessly off his tongue.

But he had stared. He had watched. He had refused- and now Hannibal felt as if he could bled himself dry, cut into his own gut and pulled warm, living hunks of tissue out. He leaned his head back, pressing a hand to his face, heard one of the dogs stirring. It was always odd to be in Will’s home at night- no matter where he was, there was life, there was breath- his own home died with the sun and gave such complete silence he had grown to know only it.

He heard the stairs creaking well before he heard Will’s soft, padding footsteps. When the man appeared, with tussled hair and simply his underwear and t-shirt, he seemed the image of perfection. Hannibal tried to take in every curve of his curls, the contours of muscle and bone masked by flesh he knew tasted _better than it had any right to_.

“I thought you left.” He kept his distance from Hannibal, and the older man hated it.

“I did consider it.” Will shifted, Hannibal could see the word _why_ in his eyes and on his lips, but he didn’t ask it. Hannibal was grateful- he had no desire for the truth to tumble from his mouth. Had it been anyone else, there would have been no fear of that- but this was Will, and his Will had managed to claw through the films of his eyes and the weaving of his lies and embed himself inside his mind, take up residency in rooms that had been locked and condemned. He was inside Hannibal as much as Hannibal had hoped to be inside him.  
Will finally moved, slowly, across the room, stopping short of the couch. “I can’t do this anymore.”

 _I might need you to hold me tonight, I might need you to say it's alright. I might need you to make the first stand- because tonight I'm finding it hard to be your man. Do you remember not long ago? When we used to live for the nighttime, cherish each moment. Now we don't live we exist, we just run through our lives- so alone. That's why you've got to hold me._  
Hannibal said nothing. He watched, he listened, and his silence seemed to made Will irritated. “Did you hear me?”

“I did,” Hannibal confirmed, “But what is it you cannot do, Will?”

“This, all of this.” He waved his hand around. “The bodies, the killing, _us_. I just...can’t.” He arm flopped down, and he was shaking his head. Hannibal felt oddly detached in that moment. He reasoned that he should be upset, that he should want to stand up and grab Will, forbid him to say such things- that he belonged to Hannibal and there was no _ending_ this. “Do you even care?”

Hannibal moved then. Instead of standing up, he slipped from the couch onto his knees, pressing against Will and wrapping one arm around his thighs. The other hand slid up his torso, punching his shirt up, so he could press his forehead to his abdomen, feel the warmth of the life in him, closing his eyes and taking in his scent. Will let him touch as he needed, hold him as he wanted, until one hand found its way into his sand-gray hair, stroked fingertips through it.

Will pulled away, untangled careful, and Hannibal made a little sound, the kind of noise that would escape Will’s throat when he would pull from his body, the kind of sound he had never uttered in his life, and hoped never to again. Will slumped onto the couch and tugged at him, pulling him up and wrapping his arms around him, clutching him tightly- a gesture typically reversed with the two. Hannibal melted into the embrace, nestled into Will’s curls and breathed in the comfort.

_Hey, if we can't find a way out of these problems then maybe we don't need this. Standing face to face enemies at war we build defenses. And secret hiding places. I might need you to hold me tonight, I might need you to say it's alright. I might need you to make the first stand- because tonight I'm finding it hard to be your man._

Hannibal realized he was whispering Will’s name into his hair, over and over again, a pleading mantra _that he despised himself for_ , but he was broken without Will, without the cracked angel that had fallen into his lap, allowed him to tear the wings from his bones and craft him new ones.

But even gods could break, and Hannibal realized he was splintering, very slowly, in this man’s arms.

“I like it too much,” Will breathed, tightening his arms around Hannibal. “The way it feels. I...I like what you make me do.” He leaned down, kissed Hannibal’s hair, felt powerful with the man clinging to him. “Sometimes I picture it’s me you’re gutting,” he admitted, “sometimes it’s worse.”

“Tell me,” Hannibal breathed, and Will clutched him tighter still.

“Sometimes I cut you so far open I can see every vesicle, every inch of bone and string of flesh. _And I like it_.” Will was shaking, and Hannibal began to move, sitting up so he could embrace him properly, letting him sink into his arms as Will tried to rock back and forth. “And I- I don’t want to _hurt_ you.”

Hannibal kissed his temple, his forehead, his eyelids, every bit of skin he could get, and Will let him, clutched onto him. “You won’t hurt me,” he breathed.

“Sometimes I want to.”

“Will,” he murmured, “I could sink my hands into you and caress the very pulsing, slick contours of your core. I could taste the very essence that _creates_ and drives you.” He nipped at the man’s earlobe. “I have thought of it, and denied the thought every time.”

“What if one day you can’t?” Will leaned back, searching for and finding Hannibal’s burgundy eyes. “What if one day _I_ can’t.”

“Then I hope you see the beauty of it all.” He grasped Will’s face, kissed him before the man could protest, and Will wrapped his arms around Hannibal, clinging for dear life. Those arms told Hannibal the night would pass, that in the morning he could find Will curled up into him, whispering his little sweet nothings in his half sleep state, pressing his mouth to whatever inch of skin he could find on Hannibal for the sake of tasting and _knowing_.

Hannibal knew that some morning, this wouldn’t be the case. Some morning, he’d wake alone with the memory of finally examining every inch of the cavity that is Will’s body, memorizing the intricate way he was put together-

Or, some morning Will could wake up with bloody hands and Hannibal’s flesh between his teeth. A secret part of Hannibal accepted both options with the same placidity, but most of him clung to the man and whispered for him to hold him, just for tonight. They could forget the sordid path they were on, until that time came. And even then, Hannibal wasn’t sure if either of them would be able to complete the act- it would feel far too much like suicide.

**Author's Note:**

> Sadly, looking at this, I definitely don't feel I did Hannibal justice :(


End file.
